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Saturday, December 13, 2014

Jonathan Gruber: Honest Liberal

Brought before a House inquisition, MIT professor and Obamacare
architect Jonathan Gruber burbled a recantation of his beliefs about how
that triumph of liberalism had been achieved.

Yet, something needs to be said in defense of Gruber.

For while he groveled and confessed to the sin of arrogance, what this Ivy League con artist boasted about rings true.

Here, Gruber explained, is how we got Obamacare passed:

“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure [the
Congressional Budget Office] did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO
scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. OK? …

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically,
call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever … that was
really, really critical to get the thing to pass. Look, I wish … we
could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not. …

“[I]f you had a law which explicitly said that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed.”

Call it the new candor. Yet, is Gruber not right on almost all counts?

The “tortured way” the bill was written led a narrowly divided
Supreme Court to uphold the act. As for the “lack of transparency,” did
not Speaker Pelosi, midwife to Obamacare, say, “We have to pass the bill
so that you can find out what is in it.”

Under Obamacare, “healthy people pay in and sick people get money.”
Is that not true? Is it not true that had Obama and his party been
honest like Gruber — that this was another rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul wealth
transfer scheme — Democrats could not have passed it?

“Look, I wish … we could make it all transparent,” said Gruber, “but I’d rather have this law than not.”

Gruber is saying that, though the selling of Obamacare required obfuscation and deceit, it was worth it! We got Obamacare!

Liberals are beating up on Gruber for spilling state secrets.

And what did Gruber do that Obama himself did not do?

For the most persuasive lie in selling Obamacare was the one Obama
told again and again: “If you like your doctor, you can keep your
doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care
plan.”

Indispensable to running the Big Con, said Jonathan, was “the stupidity of the American voter.”

Here Gruber was wrong. The American people are not lacking in
intelligence, but they are trusting, often lacking in knowledge, and
they do rely on elected representatives to read and understand those
thousand-page bills in Congress.

And their faith is often misplaced.

Bottom line: Gruber & Co. won; America lost. Though the nation
did not discover how badly it had been swindled until Obamacare began to
be implemented.

Why, even when conservatives win elections, does the nation continue
to move inexorably leftward? As a friend from that era wrote me
recently, other than our victory in the Cold War, what do we
conservatives have to show for all of our political victories?

In the half century since 1964, the GOP won the White House in seven
of 12 elections. Since 1994, the GOP has won more off-year elections
than it has lost, including the major wins in 2010 and 2014.

Republican strength on Capitol Hill today rivals that of the 80th
Congress of 1946, and the dominance the party enjoyed in the 1920s.

Yet, from past disappointments, current hopes and expectations are not high.

What is it that pushes the nation leftward even when conservatives
win at the ballot box? The permanent powers and the deep state.

While there are conservative enclaves within the major media, they
are few. Our mammoth bureaucracy — 22 million municipal, county, state
and federal employees — has a vital interest in the preservation and
growth of government.

Add up the beneficiaries of all social programs, and the number now
approaches 100 million. They don’t tend to stay committed to folks who
will take away what they have come to depend upon.

Higher education is dominated by tenured leftists and radicals. The Ivy League is “No Conservative Need Apply” country.

Our popular culture, from movies to music to TV, is dominated by the left. Conservatives in Hollywood meet in catacombs.

There are conservative judges and justices on the courts, but few
counter-revolutionaries. The decisions that come down either advance or
confirm decisions handed down half a century ago by the Warren Court.

Yet, as Herb Stein observed, “If something cannot go on forever, it
will stop.” From Illinois to Puerto Rico to France, Italy and Greece,
debt-ridden Western social welfare states seem to be coming to the end
of the line.

Like the shepherd boy in Aesop’s fable, the right has often cried, “Wolf!” This time, the kid may be right.

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